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Saturday, July 29, 2017

Figure 8's On A Frozen Pond

He told me they were hiding, he and his wife and son,when the air ripped, his eardrums ruptured and by the time he got to his feet,his house was gone and he wasn't married anymore.

I set his broken arm, treated his gashed forehead. I asked him his name, but I don't think he answered.His son is here, as are so many. Some will survive and wander off.

I was trained as a nurse in a hospital in France, with a job promiseback home in Quebec. I am multi-lingual:I can say "You're going to die," in seven languages.

I am slight. My movements are deliberate.I was never any help in our backyard hockey games, growing up. Now, I am as healthy as a chambered bullet.I thought he was blind for a minute, but he was only in shock.Once, I saw a lightning-struck tree next to a frozen pond where I was skating. I put my arms out. Ta da. I will save this guy's arm, stop his head from bleeding. You can see the tracers. All this death, it gets into your head,the blood forever under my bitten nails.Things bodies were never intended to withstand come from the air,sent by strangers, wiping heartbeats from the face of the earth.

"Would you like to see your son?" I don't add, "while there's still time."He is ambulatory and triple-oriented. He is blown up, within himself.We pick our way around the cots, shelves, and treatment stations.A tv is on, powered by generator. We pass by it.Someone is talking about the war. My patient can't hear a word.Here is his boy. I smile at him out of old habit, gesture at a box where he can sit.I have been here six months. These people, they shiver and cough,hemorrhage from catastrophic wounds, ask for water, go still.I will go back to Canada in January, empty and silent,Healthy as a chambered round._______For Karin's "A Glance At Narrative" challenge at Real Toads.

A powerful narrative from start to finish. I love the economy of words, especially in the opening lines, where you set the scene, and the matter-of-fact tone of a trained nurse interspersed with emotion:'You can see the tracers. All this death, it gets into your head,the blood forever under my bitten nails.Things bodies were never intended to withstand come from the air,sent by strangers, wiping heartbeats from the face of the earth'.

No one jumps into a tale like you do FB. You work it like triage--speedy, matter of fact, tournaquets first and get onto the next body. This is also a place most of us are too comfortable to imagine, laden with facts that don't rhyme. But my favorite thing about this high caliber narrative is the title, which is razor sharp to begin with and hangs in the mind like a descending blade before getting to what it was meant to cleave at the very end. Wish I had me a river too these days.

What a tale--that when it comes to the larger world, even when we are in it, we are not of it, even when mentally we feel every impact, as here with a healer's empathy and frustration and sympathetic pain. Your bullet image is outstanding--a metaphor for all we passively do to destroy simply by existing where and the way we do, skating infinity on a frozen surface that covers a depth of tragedy and death.

You take us right into the scene in a way newscasters can't..........we stare numbly at the screen, too shell shocked to take in the vastness of the planetary distress. But your poem makes us feel the humanity of such events. A wonderfully gripping write, Shay. You always totally nail it.

"He is ambulatory and triple-oriented. He is blown up, within himself."

You are a goddess of words, Shay. Why you would ever bother speaking to another human eludes me; we are all beneath you.

This nurse fascinates me. Something tells me she is the deadliest weapon of all --- as if she kills with her healing touch.

"I am slight. My movements are deliberate." ... "Once, I saw a lightning-struck tree next to a frozen pond where I was skating. I put my arms out. Ta da." I feel like she both knocked it down and picked it back up.

My new book !

Modesty spoken here.

kindred spirits

"I have been blessed with these two gorgeousWings and I refuse to load my heart with weights."

--Marina Tsvetaeva

“I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.” ― Jack London, The Turtles of Tasman

"The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all." — Ted Hughes

Poetry made from...

...trinkets, mojo, and double mocha latte!

Welcome to the Word Garden

The Word Garden consists of original poems written by me, Shay a.k.a. Fireblossom. Please stop a while and enjoy them. But don't pick the blooms that you find here, they must not be planted elsewhere without permission of the author.